Harlan - Im Schatten von Jud Süß

This eagerly anticipated 2008 documentary is a disappointment. Although offering information about a dedicated craftsman, it fails to give a comprehensive overview of Veit Harlan's life or a clear outline of his relationship with the studio bosses.

A series of interviews with his wife, children and grandchildren elicits confusing details which this viewer struggled to put into chronological order. The director, or editors, seemed to enjoy withholding details about the different members of Harlan's extended family, the way William Faulkner holds back information about his anguished Southern families.

The Harlans comprise diverse and complex personalities - architect, actors, investigative journalist, painters - and, as highly intelligent and well-educated personalities, they presented diverse interpretations of their father's or grandfather's character and career. These figures provided more substance to the narrative than the intermittent story of Veit Harlan himself.

His allegedly infamous film "Jud Suss" seems very tame when judged by the sequences shown. Although the work of a craftsman, its melodrama is antiquated; and it might be time to remove it from the historical spotlight and consign it to "strictly film school". Clips from his other films make Harlan appear more interesting and innovative.

During WW2 filmmaker, Veit Harlan (1899-1964) was widely considered to be one of Nazi Germany's most important directors.

Harlan's most well-known film "Jud SuB" (1940) was a blatant work of anti-Semitic propaganda that was required viewing by all members of the Third Reich.

Through stills, archival footage, and interviews - This documentary focuses in on the wildly varying attitudes of Harlan's children and grandchildren and how they struggle, even today, with the legacy of their ancestor's work.

This documentary tells the story of "the most important director of the Third Reich", Veit Harlan, and his infamous film "Jud Süß" (amongst other film of him). In my opinion, the way the documentary's director, Felix Moeller, chooses, is very good for this subject. He does long interviews with nearly all living relatives which leads to a multi-layered portrayal of both the director and the human being Harlan as well as an insight in the conflicts of his children and grandchildren with him. The film also shows some sequences of the main works of Harlan, like "Der Herrscher", "Opfergang", "Kolberg" and "Verrat an Deutschland", so the viewer can get some idea of the visual style and the plots. All in all, this is a great film history documentary and a very useful introduction to the work of Veit Harlan!

The , always, unfortunate marriage of art and propaganda, can be quite dangerous. Veit Harlan, pet director of notorious Goebels, played with the devil and seemingly survived. He escaped the prosecution and continued to make his overblown kitschy movies and got to expel his last breath in the Isle of Capri in Italy. This excellent documentary is focused on the impact that person like that have on his descdendants. They all seem to be deeply affected with it, even the one son who refuses to say anything bad about him. There is a French granddaughter, and the Italian grandson, a niece married to Stanley Kubrick. And all, even almost 50 years after his death still paying the price for his misdeeds. The sins of fathers and so forth... Movie well worth seeing.

The title of this documentary is very accurate, so it was my fault that I expected it to be entirely about Veit Harlan, the director of the repulsive anti-Semitic movie Jude Suss. In fact, most of it is constructed from interviews with his children and grandchildren, and shows how they deal with having Harlan as their grandfather. That's mildly interesting, perhaps moreso if you're interested in contemporary German studies and how modern Germans come to terms with the Nazi legacy.

If, like me, you didn't pay close enough attention to the title and expected this movie to tell you lots about the director of that one infamous movie - which I have, in fact, sat through - then you, too, might be somewhat disappointed. I would have liked to know a lot more about the movies he made before Jude Suss, why he was chosen to make that movie, and then how he dealt with the fallout of having done so, both during and after the war. Also, I would have liked to have known a lot more about the reception of the movie.

My real criticism, however, has nothing to do with the movie itself. I watched the American version, which comes with subtitles. They were white, with no cartouche around them, which meant that they were often illegible. Couldn't someone redo the subtitles, so that they can be read?